In some additive manufacturing (AM) devices a container is provided with a radiation-curable resin (RCR) in the container. The flat bottom of the container is typically made of a transparent material that allows the resin curing radiation to be transmitted through the bottom and interact with a radiation-curable resin layer adjacent to the bottom of the container. The transmitted through the bottom curing radiation interacts/cures a thin, adjacent to the bottom, layer of resin, typically 10-100 um thick. Once a layer of resin is cured the entire manufactured 3D object is lifted, typically 10-100 um above the bottom of the container, allowing to cure another layer of radiation-curable resin forming the object. This way the object is built a layer after a layer until the entire object is produced above the bottom of the container.
Additive manufacturing (AM) devices where a layer of radiation-curable resin is deposited on the top of an earlier deposited layer are also known and described for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,586,494, 6,966,960, 7,291,002, and 8,509,933 and European patent EP2654412. Typically, the thickness of the cured or solidified material layer is about 10-60 micron. This is because the radiation-curable resin absorbs a large part of the curing radiation and makes it almost impossible to solidify thicker layers of radiation-curable resin.
Such additive manufacturing devices are typically intended to manufacture objects with relatively small size and high dimensional accuracy. Manufacture of such objects results in a relatively long time of production. For example, production of a small 50×50×50 mm object would typically take more than an hour. Manufacture of larger size objects would naturally take more time making the method not suitable and cost effective for additive manufacture of large size objects, for example, of 1000×1000 mm or even 5000×5000 mm.